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      New Movies and Shows Coming to Netflix in December: ‘Squid Game’ and More

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      This month has a ton of new titles arriving for U.S. subscribers, including a Nate Bargatze special and the return of “Squid Game.”Every month, Netflix adds movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of December’s most promising new titles for U.S. subscribers. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)‘Black Doves’ Season 1Starts streaming: Dec. 5Created by Joe Barton (known for the stylish series “Giri/Haji” and “The Lazarus Project”), this twisty thriller has Keira Knightley playing Helen, a secret agent so deeply undercover that she is married to the British politician she is spying on — and is the mother to his children. When Jason (Andrew Koji), a man Helen was having an affair with, is very publicly assassinated by London mobsters, Helen’s boss, Reed (Sarah Lancashire), and her close colleague Sam (Ben Whishaw) try to keep the investigation into the murder from reaching back to her and blowing her cover. “Black Doves” is set in a pulp fiction version of England where everyone is hiding something and no one fully trusts anybody — a place where information is currency and people survive on guile.‘Maria’Starts streaming: Dec. 11The third film in the director Pablo Larraín’s trilogy of biopics (after “Jackie” and “Spencer”), “Maria” is a showcase for Angelina Jolie, who plays the opera diva Maria Callas. Set during the final week of the singer’s life, the movie has Callas in a druggie stupor, imagining that she is sitting for an interview in which she reflects on her tumultuous life. Jolie reportedly spent months in opera training, not to learn how to copy Callas’s voice but rather to make sure she could stand, move and breathe like a master.‘No Good Deed’ Season 1Starts streaming: Dec. 12At the start of this dark dramedy, a Los Angeles couple, Paul (Ray Romano) and Lydia (Lisa Kudrow), are anxious to sell their house: a beautiful, century-old home in an upscale neighborhood. A handful of motivated buyers, played by Luke Wilson, Linda Cardellini, Teyonah Parris, O-T Fagbenle, Abbi Jacobson and Poppy Liu, circle the property while Paul and Lydia try to hide their secret reasons for the sale — and their relationship with a dangerous ex-con played by Denis Leary. Similar to the creator Liz Feldman’s previous Netflix series, “Dead to Me,” “No Good Deed” is about people who seem outwardly to be enjoying some material success but whose personal lives are in shambles; privately, they all feel they’re on the brink of disaster.‘Your Friend, Nate Bargatze’Starts streaming: Dec. 24The stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze was popular before he hosted “Saturday Night Live” for the first time in 2023, but that episode — and a second hosting gig in October — helped boost him into comedy’s A-list. This month, Bargatze will be hosting a Christmas-themed variety show for CBS (airing on Dec. 19 and also available on Paramount+); and then on Christmas Eve, he will debut this third Netflix stand-up special. It makes sense for Bargatze to be delivering new material at a time when families are gathering and looking for something to do. He is one of the rare modern comics whose profanity-free jokes are suitable for pretty much all ages, touching on such universal topics as marriage, parenting and how to navigate the modern world’s sometimes confusing etiquette.‘Squid Game’ Season 2Starts streaming: Dec. 26The first season of the Korean mystery-thriller “Squid Game” became an unexpected international phenomenon, captivating audiences with its depiction of an elaborate tournament in a remote location in which desperate people risk their lives for a huge cash prize. As Season 2 begins, rumors about the game have begun to leak out, and several people are looking to find it — including the former players Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) and Jun-ho (Wi Ha-jun). The series’s Emmy-winning writer-director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, returns for the second of a planned three-season run, bringing back the visually spectacular and nerve-racking contests of Season 1. He also adds more social commentary, examining the brokenness of a world, very much like our own, where such a deadly underground competition could exist.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Agency’ and ‘Black Doves’: Spy Dramas in Touch With Their Feelings

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      ‘The Agency’ and ‘Black Doves’ are part of a new crop of espionage series whose biggest battles take place within the hearts and minds of their agents.Ukraine and Russia are at war. Political instability and civil war rage in Sudan. Iran is ramping up its nuclear capabilities. The world is basically a mess in “The Agency,” the new espionage series that inundates the viewer with rapidly intersecting story lines set on an increasingly complicated geopolitical playing field.The series, which premiered last week on Paramount+ (with the Showtime tier), is part of a surge in spy shows that also includes “The Day of the Jackal,” on Peacock; “Black Doves,” premiering Dec. 5 on Netflix; and “Slow Horses,” which wrapped up its fourth season on Apple TV+ this fall.True to the genre, these series jet all over the globe (though mostly Europe) and unfold in high-tech command centers and in dark urban alleyways, via thrilling shootouts and furtive meetups. Some operatives pursue sanctioned missions as others go rogue. Multiple cats chase multiple mice, and it’s not always clear who is which.The most pitched battles, however, happen within the hearts and minds of the individual players. Even as the new spy shows reflect a fraught, tangled and mercenary post-Cold War world, the existential threats and conflicts are more interior, intimate and, in many ways, timeless.“It’s the agency,” a Central Intelligence Agency honcho (Jeffrey Wright) tells a field agent (Michael Fassbender) in “The Agency.” “Nothing is personal.” Nothing, that is, except everything.Jeffrey Wright, right, with John Magaro, plays a C.I.A. boss in “The Agency,” based on the French series “The Bureau.”Luke Varley/Paramount+ with ShowtimeWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kieran Culkin Could Rule Oscar Season. He’d Rather Be at Home.

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      One of the many eccentricities of a modern-day awards campaign is that it can last much longer than the film shoot that put you in contention in the first place. In 2010, I spoke with Mark Ruffalo partway through a monthslong awards campaign for “The Kids Are All Right” and he said, with some astonishment, “Kyle, I spent six days on this movie.”Still, most actors are happy to decamp to Los Angeles and stump for their film for several months. (It worked out pretty well for Ruffalo and his movie, since both were Oscar-nominated.) And that’s why I’ve recently seen a lot of Kieran Culkin, who’s considered the supporting actor front-runner for “A Real Pain”: To tout the movie, he wooed film critics at an intimate dinner at Spago, worked the ballroom at the starry Governors Awards and, on a recent evening in November, met me for coffee at the Sunset Tower bar in West Hollywood.All of this appears as easy as breathing for Culkin, who is chatty and clever and charming — gifts that were put to good use during his Emmy-winning run on the HBO series “Succession,” which concluded last spring. But on the day I met up with the 42-year-old actor, he was nevertheless frustrated: His most recent press tour meant that he would have to miss a parent-teacher conference back home in New York.“My wife was like, ‘We can postpone it and do it over Zoom,’ and I was like, ‘No, no, do it the right way, when they scheduled it. Go,’” he said. “I want to be the one that can go off for a weekend and do work but also be the parent-teacher guy. But I think I’m getting to the place of having to accept that I can’t always get home.”Family is important to Culkin, who grew up in New York with seven siblings (including his brother Macaulay, of “Home Alone” fame) and now lives there with his wife, Jazz Charton, and their two children. He readily confesses that he tried to pull out of “A Real Pain” when its shooting dates were changed, since the revised schedule meant that his wife and children would be able to visit only at the beginning of the Poland-set production, leaving him without them for nearly a month.“I was like, ‘I can’t be away from the family for that long,’ and I had a flip-out,” he said.It’s fortunate that Culkin was convinced to stay since it’s hard to imagine “A Real Pain” without him. Starring opposite Jesse Eisenberg, who also wrote and directed the film, they play once-close cousins who reunite for a trip through Poland in an effort to better understand their late grandmother, who grew up there. Since her death, Culkin’s Benji has been unmoored, and he was never all that moored to begin with: Benji is charismatic and confounding in equal measure, given to wild mood swings that vex his cousin David (Eisenberg).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Late Night Razzes Trump’s Upcoming Visit to Notre-Dame

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      “If all goes according to plan, he would like to buy it and turn it into a casino,” Jimmy Kimmel said of the Paris cathedral on Tuesday.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Prayers Up for ParisPresident-elect Donald Trump will fly to France this weekend to attend the reopening of the historic Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, five years after it was gutted by a fire.“If all goes according to plan, he would like to buy it and turn it into a casino,” Jimmy Kimmel joked on Tuesday.“When Notre-Dame was on fire five years ago, if you remember, Trump was very helpful. He tweeted, ‘So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out?’ Because before then, nobody had thought of using water to put out a fire. That’s why he’s a genius.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Trump plans to meet with French President Macron, who is one of the first world leaders smart enough to congratulate him on his victory last month. He wrote: ‘Ready to work together as we did for four years. With your convictions and mine.’ That’s right — between the two of them, they’ve got 34 convictions.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And it’ll be interesting to see Trump and Macron interact. Trump is said to be jealous of the French president because he’s able to button his suit jacket without adding butter to his chest.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But it’s expected to be a nice, very pleasant trip for the president-elect to enjoy Paris before he takes office, and, of course, for his wife Melania to enjoy wherever it is she will be this weekend.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (On Fire Edition)“I read that President-elect Trump is going to Paris this weekend to attend the reopening of the Notre-Dame Cathedral after it was destroyed in a fire back in 2019. Yep, Trump’s going to take one step inside the church, and it’s going to burst right back into flames.” — JIMMY FALLON“The opening ceremonies are this Sunday, and the restored cathedral will be honored with massive pyrotechnics, a fire-eater and an exhibit of Europe’s most oily rags.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingOn “The Tonight Show” the comedian Fortune Feimster shared the story of successfully introducing her wife to Madonna after 10 years of trying.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightBest buddies Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen will stop by Wednesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutJulia Fox takes pride in being one of New York’s most out-there artists.Megan LovalloActress, writer and all-around It Girl Julia Fox shared her tips for being a freak in T Magazine’s Freak City issue. More

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      An Imaginative Treat for ‘Adventure Time’ Fans

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      From the creator of that series comes “Mystery Cuddlers,” on Adult Swim, about a retired couple who have taken up private investigating.Today for your viewing pleasure: two Adult Swim one-offs, one newly birthed, the other sadly dead but still glorious. To be a TV fan is to know that sometimes 22 minutes is all you get.The new cartoon “Mystery Cuddlers,” available on the Adult Swim website and YouTube, follows a loving couple, Arthur and June Cuddler (voiced by Randall Park and Pam Grier), who’ve taken up private investigating in their retirement. “Cuddlers” has a bright, appealing oddness and fun character names like Helvetica Deathgurgle, but perhaps its biggest draw is its lineage: It was created by Pendleton Ward, the creator of “Adventure Time,” and Jack Pendarvis, an “Adventure Time” collaborator. “Adventure Time” and its spinoffs are among the most enchanting, dynamic shows of the 2000s, so even a glimmer of its greatness here is an exciting development. Adult Swim often posts pilots, many of which go no further, but in trying times, it’s good to practice hope. (The creators have called the cartoon a “pilot,” but a spokesperson for Adult Swim said it was a “special.”)As we turn our gaze to the future, we also honor those pilots that fared less well. “I’m the Mayor of Bimmi Gardens,” now on YouTube, was made in 2021 but not picked up. It’s a shame because “Bimmi” is filled with an ecstatic strangeness not currently present on television. (I’ll miss you forever, “At Home With Amy Sedaris.”) The show was created by and stars the comedian Chris Fleming and is set in the magical city of Bimmi Gardens, an island off the coast of Florida but technically “a territory of Maine,” whose primary crop is boba.“The boba crop grows when men stay virginal of mind and body,” the mayor reminds us. “Every year people have the same irrational fear: that the men of Bimmi Gardens will become horny and the moon will punish us by preventing our precious boba bushes from fruiting.”The mayor’s assistant (Victoria Pedretti, of “You”) is named RossandRachel, and the evil, alternative crop to boba is mojito, which the mayor fears will turn Bimmi into the worst imaginable place: Miami. Maybe it’s not that surprising that a pastel boba fantasia did not capture the hearts of TV executives, but that stinks for the rest of us.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jon Stewart Thinks Biden Could Have Timed That Pardon Better

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      “Normally, you drop a controversial pardon like the way you buy porn at a gas station: in a flurry of other distracting purchases,” the “Late Night” host said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.‘Hypocrisy Isn’t Illegal’As Thanksgiving weekend drew to a close, President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon for his son Hunter, despite having repeatedly pledged not to do so. It was the talk of late night on Monday.On “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart questioned the president’s timing.“Normally, you drop a controversial pardon like the way you buy porn at a gas station: in a flurry of other distracting purchases.” — JON STEWART“Thanksgiving! I knew it! Perhaps I can explain the way this pardon went down in my new one-man show, ‘Can You Get Hunter to Stop Looking at Me Like That?’” — JON STEWART“He’s an 82-year-old man — he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life visiting his son in prison.” — JON STEWART“Hypocrisy isn’t illegal, nor is it particularly unusual in politics. It’s not like he’s ever going to run again, so why not take care of your kid, even if you said you weren’t going to? I respect it. I don’t have a problem with it. The problem is, the rest of the Democrats made Biden’s pledge to not pardon Hunter the foundation of their defense of America.” — JON STEWARTThe Punchiest Punchlines (World’s Greatest Dad Edition)“Yeah, it was a big shopping weekend, and millions of people got great deals, but nobody got a better deal than Hunter Biden.” — JIMMY FALLON“Christmas came early for this guy.” — TYRUS, guest host of “Gutfeld!”“The Biden presidency has now entered the ‘Grandpa doesn’t give a damn about what you think’ phase.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And, yes, Joe Biden did say he wasn’t going to pardon Hunter. But, to be fair, there’s a very good chance he doesn’t remember saying that.” — JIMMY KIMMELWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Stream These Movies and Shows Before They Leave Netflix in December

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      A bunch of movies and TV shows are leaving for U.S. subscribers by the end of December. Here’s a roundup of the best.Two excellent independent dramas leave Netflix in the United States early this month, so get on them while you can; other present-wrapping background possibilities include a Liam Neeson action flick, two animated comedies and an easy-breezy comedy-drama about the rich and the doctor who serves them. (Dates indicate the final day a title is available.)‘White Girl’ (Dec. 2)Stream it here.Morgan Saylor, best known at the time this movie was released, in 2016, for her work as an all-American teen daughter on “Homeland,” raised some eyebrows when this sexually frank and pharmaceutically candid indie drama debuted. She stars here as Leah, a New York City college student whose adventures in casual sex and recreational drugs take up much of the picture’s running time. But this is no lazy exercise in shock value; the writer-director Elizabeth Wood based her script on her own rocky youth and treats her protagonist with an expected, but still refreshing, nonjudgmental sympathy. It’s a vivid and occasionally troubling movie, but it never feels forced or inauthentic.‘The Commuter’ (Dec. 3)Stream it here.This 2018 action drama was an early entry in a seemingly endless line of late-period action vehicles for Liam Neeson, the Oscar-nominated star of “Schindler’s List.” Here, he plays Michael MacCauley, an ex-cop who just lost his job as a life insurance salesman; on the commuter train home, he is drawn into a complicated scheme involving contract killers, dirty federal agents and the would-be witness they’re supposed to protect. Jaume Collet-Serra directed several of Neeson’s action pictures before this one, and he had already figured out how to play to his strengths, even if this one is essentially a relocated remake of their earlier film “nonstop.” And Collet-Serra handles the big set pieces with flair, particularly a long fight scene between Neeson and a hit man, in which the two men demolish each other and their train car using their fists, glass and, at one point, an electric guitar.‘Trolls’ (Dec. 7)Stream it here.Some family movies — like, say, “Wild Robot,” or “Inside Out” — truly offer fun for the whole family. So let’s clear this up right away: “Trolls” is not one of those movies. It’s an aggressively over-the-top experience, big and broad and loud and frequently obnoxious. But kids absolutely love it (take it from a father of two), and it’s not hard to see why: The songs are catchy, the performers — especially the leads, Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake — are having a good time, and the never-give-up messaging is valuable (particularly in Kendrick’s charming solo number “Get Back Up Again”).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More